My thoughts after the alpha

[Kitsyn]

First, I really enjoyed the alpha test this past weekend. Although life obligations meant I didn't get to test as much as I wanted, I took three toons -- archer, caster, rogue type -- through the tutorial and into beginning gameplay.

What I liked:

1. The starting cities and tutorial quests. I felt like the tutorial quests gave me a good start on gameplay. For the most part, they were self-explanatory, although a few things were confusing and could have been spelled out a little better. For example, I saw many people asking the same questions about where to find the bandage recipe. A simple direction to look at the tabs on the side of the crafting window would have helped.
2. The green stars indicating where to go. This was really helpful.
3. Memorizing ability builds. I liked the option to have different ability builds, and also the inability to switch them on the fly. Having to go to a fire at an inn was a good balance.
4. Combat. Once I figured out what I was doing, combat was fun.
5. Gathering was fun, and the variety of materials was good. There could be more small stones. I liked a suggestion I saw in chat of allowing stone blocks to be further broken into small stones.
6. Crafting was fun, although it was confusing that some recipes were in one place and others were in another. I suppose this is something one learns over time.

What was difficult:

1. The inability to change camera angle. I could be standing with a town two feet in front of me and not be able to see it because I had to stare at the top of my head. Please allow changing the camera angle to be lower.
2. No follow camera. This builds on the previous comment. I would like to be able to keep my camera behind my toon. Having it move around me was somewhat nausea inducing. Allowing it to swivel and lock with a toggle such as mouse middle button would be great.
3. Autorun automatically bound to left control. This was a problem because some other things, such as selecting an icon for a skill or talent build, also used control. Until I figured out to rebind autorun to something more traditional (numlock in my case), I kept finding myself darting around the inn, bashing into walls.
4. Lack of health regen. If there is health regen, it was not noticeable. Having to stand and use 6 bandages after every combat got tedious. Either the bandages should heal for more, characters should regen health while out of combat, or both.
5. No indicator on the map for the starting cities. I'm a perma-lost individual. Having to remember where, approximately, the starting city was, and then find it again, was a challenge.
6. Not being able to walk up/down the slightest incline. I felt channeled, and having to walk great distances to climb a tiny rise was tedious.

What I observed:

1. The mage hits way harder than the archer. As they are both ranged dps builds, the disparity was strange to me.
2. My character always said I was a male human, even though all three of my toons were female.
3. One character creation screen stated that starting builds are just a start. Something in the tutorial that explains how to deviate from a starting build would be helpful. I imagine it's just switching weapons, learning new/different skills and incorporating them into a preset; but it would be helpful for new players to spell that out somewhere.
4. Adding talents into the tutorial would be helpful.
5. I was pretty clueless about building a house, and I saw LOTS of questions in chat about it. Some explanation of housing, citizenship, town claiming, etc. would be helpful.
6. I saw two horses before I had a net or the understanding that I needed to catch one with a net and tame it. Then I made nets and never saw another horse on any of my toons. More roaming horses would be nice.
7. The mage's starting heal does almost no healing.

All in all, I enjoyed the game and look forward to future tests. Thanks for including me in this one!

[spoletta]

There is a way to see the starting cities on the map.
If you press the flag button on the map, it highlights region borders, and the starting cities are immediately recognizable.

Also, it is strange that you found mages hitting harder than archers. It is actually the contrary, archers have an higher dps.

[Wargfoot]

I thought it odd that the tutorial sent me in the direction of goblins and bandits, which are very hard as a noobie, when zombies are so much easier.

[DarthJafo]

I never even saw zombies. Granted, I spent most of my wandering time killing wildlife to fill the book. But i really didn't wander to far.

I feel that its more beneficial to fill up one critters knowledge before moving on to much. As I Mage, the spiderlings, The Cryo and Pyromancers and the bosses of gobs and Bandits all had useful spells i could have learned. That's probably how I'll try and do the following tests and launch. Unless there's parties going after larger mobs.

Would really like being able to annotate the map so i could put notes on there of where to find certain critters.

[OlivePit]

The crafting discrepancy is intended to create diversity and trade incentives.
Each town gets 1-2 research points per rank, you have to research all the lower connected technologies to get access to something. Here is a much reduced example of a town tech tree:

As you can see it is expensive and time consuming to build up and there are far more techs available than can be gotten by one town. As such each governor has hard choices to make and know that they cannot please everyone, and often not even themselves. This promotes trade and the creation of multiple specialized cities.

Health regen scales with con as do the bandages. There are hints at further 'alchemy' consumables. There are multiple pieces of equipment and talents that help in this as well. As with everything in this game you make compromises and work with them while using gear and/or allies to cover your weak points. You should not expect to be able to tank, dps, and CC all at the same time with one character.

The terrain is absolutely intentional. There are texture cues on the cliffs that show where one can go up or down them. It takes time to spot them but become second nature over time. For everyone else there are the clear brown paths visible on even the world map.

Mages have burst, Archers have sustain. Archers also are more likely to get crits.

The mages heal is a constant gripe I share and ties to the over powered nature of bandages as a comparison. In any case this is not a heal tanking game, more of a careful squad based game. There are much better heals out there, you just have to work for them.

For houses be in the roped area and click the house icon that pops up.

[Darcheville]

It would be nice if the camera showed a little further away. Because the field of view is too small. Its too important